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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39316
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

First, congratulations for coming out of that hole and taking up writing again.

It can be worthwhile to take up an old project. You can look at it again from your current perspective with fresh insights. Be ready that you might want to do extensive editing.

I wrote a novel to about 90% of the first draft while I was in university. Then it sat on a harddrive for a decade. I picked it up again after that and completed it, wrote a really powerful ending, and went over it two or three times editing and improving my - at that early time - writing with potential for improvement. Then real life happened again and I didn't touch it for some years again. Then, about a year ago, I dusted it off again and went over it with new knowledge about how to do this or write that, edited it a couple more times, throwed out one chapter, added three new chapters, and I'm now nearing completion.

I've had other works that I wrote and then left unfinished, and when I came back to them after a few years, I throwed them out. Sometimes a distance in time makes you understand just why a story doesn't work.

I suggest you read through this old text and check what you feel about it afterwards. Are you still convinced that it is a story worth telling? If so, go for it.

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